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Chapter 15 “The Golden Vanity”

Please gather and take away your husband’s belongings before you leave.

It is my task—my first task as a widow—to clear the hospital room of my husband’s things.

Only just today—that is, yesterday morning—which was Sunday morning—I had brought the enormous New York Times, mail, page proofs for the magazine, and several other items my husband had requested from his office. Now, I will dispose of the Times and I will bring the other things back home with me.

Not yet have I realized—this will take time—that as a widow I will be reduced to a world of things. And these things retain but the faintest glimmer of their original identity and meaning as in a dead and desiccated husk of something once organic there might be discerned a glimmer of its original identity and meaning.

The wristwatch on the table beside my husband’s hospital bed—where my husband is lying, very still, as in a mimicry of the most deep and peaceful sleep—this item, an Acqua Quartz watch of no special distinction which very likely Ray bought in our Pennington drugstore, with a dark brown leather band, a digital clock-face pronouncing the time 1:21 A.M.—which, even as I stare at it, turns to 1:22 A.M.—has no identity and no meaning except It is Ray’s wristwatch and except Because it is his, I will take it with me. That is my responsibility.

In this very early stage of Widowhood—these first few minutes, hours—you might almost call it Pre-Widowhood for the Widow hasn’t yet “got it”—what it will mean to inhabit a free-fall world from which meaning has been drained—the Widow takes comfort in such small tasks, rituals; the perimeters of the Death-protocol in which experienced others will guide her as one might guide a stunned and doomed animal out of a pen and into a chute by the use of a ten-foot pole.

Mrs. Smith? Do you have someone to call?

Quickly I reply—Yes.

Would you like any assistance in calling?

Quickly I reply—No.

These seem to be correct answers. It is not a correct answer to reply But I don’t want to call anyone. I want to go home now, and die.

As we’d fantasized—neither of us wished to outlive the other.

Though Ray had a horror of suicide—he did not think of suicide as any sort of romantic option—now he is dead, he would surely wish to return to life.

These thoughts rush through my head like deranged hornets. I make no effort to deflect them, still less to slow and examine them. It is strange to be so assailed by rushing thoughts when I am moving so slowly—speaking so slowly—like one who has been slammed over the head with a sledgehammer.

Already the time on Ray’s watch is 1:24 A.M.

This hospital room is so cold—my teeth have begun to chatter.

In the small windowless bathroom in the medicine cabinet—behind the mirror—in the unflattering fluorescent glare—my fingers close numbly upon a toothbrush—Ray’s toothbrush?—a badly twisted tube of toothpaste—mouthwash—deodorant—a man’s roll-on deodorant—clear-glide invisible-solid powder-soft scentless anti-perspirant deodorant for men—shaving cream, in a small aerosol container—how slowly I am moving, as if undersea—gathering my husband’s belongings to take home.

Someone must have instructed me to undertake this task. I am not certain that I would have thought of it myself. The word belongings is not my word, I think it is a curious word that sticks to me like a burr.

Belongings. To take home.

And home, too—this is a curious word.

Strange to consider that there would be a home, now—without my husband—a home to which to take his belongings.

Here is Ray’s comb—a small black plastic comb—I have glimpsed amid his things, sometimes. When we’ve traveled together—staying in a single hotel room—a kind of intimacy more marked than the intimacy of daily life, which has acquired its own subtle protocol; at such times, I would see my husband’s toiletries kit and in it such articles as toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant etc. But also nail clippers, after-shave cologne, prescription pills. It would seem to me touching, it would provoke a smile, that a man, any man, should take such care to groom himself, as women take such care.

That a man, any man, should groom himself to be attractive, loved—this seems wonderful to me.

That a man, any man, should seem in this way to require another, a woman, to be attracted to him, and to love him—what a mystery this is! For to a woman, the quintessential male is unknowable, elusive.

Even the domestic male, the husband—always there is something unknowable and elusive in him. As in Ray’s life, or perhaps in Ray’s personality, there has always been, for all our intimacy of forty-seven years—for the record, forty-seven years, twenty-five days of our marriage—a hidden chamber, a region to which he might retreat, to which I don’t have access.

Now, Ray has retreated to a place where I can’t follow. Just behind his shut eyes.

These toiletry things—that they were his, but are now no longer his, seems to me very strange.

Now, they are belongings.

Your husband’s belongings.

One of the reasons that I am moving slowly—perhaps it has nothing to do with being struck on the head by a sledgehammer—is that, with these belongings, I have nowhere to go except home. This home—without my husband—is not possible for me to consider.

The tile floor seems to be shifting beneath my feet. Hurriedly I’d dressed and left the house, I am not even sure what shoes these are—my vision is blurred—could be, I am wearing two left shoes—or have switched right and left shoes—recall that, in the history of civilization, the designation right and left shoe is relatively recent, not so very long ago individuals counted themselves fortunate to wear just shoes—this is the sort of random, pointless and yet intriguing information Ray would tell me, or read out to me from a magazine—Did you know this? Not so very long ago . . .

The impulse comes over me, to rush into the other room, to tell whoever it is, or was—a woman—a stranger to me, as to Ray—about shoes, the history of right and left—except I understand that this is not the time; and that Ray, in any case, for whose benefit I might have mentioned it, will not hear.

This past week I’ve become astonishingly clumsy, inept—forgetful—to pack Ray’s bathroom things I should have brought in a bag of some kind, but I didn’t—awkwardly I am holding them in my hands, my arms—one of the objects slips and falls—the aerosol-can shaving cream, that clatters loudly on the floor—as I stoop to retrieve it blood rushes into my head, there is a tearing sensation in my chest—Shaving cream! In this terrible place!

It would be a time to cry, now. Ray’s shaving cream in his widow’s sweaty hand.

Vanity of shaving cream, mouthwash, powder-soft scentless deodorant for men.

Vanity of our lives. Vanity of our love for each other, and our marriage.

Vanity of believing that somehow we own our lives.

Lines from a Scottish ballad—“The Golden Vanity”—rush into my head. For my brain is unnervingly porous, I have no defense against such invasions—

There once was a ship

And she sailed upon the sea.

And the name of our ship was

The Golden Vanity.

There is something faintly taunting, even mocking about these words. I am transfixed listening to them as if under a spell. The words are familiar to me though I have not heard them—I have not thought of them—in a very long time.

There once was a ship

And she sailed upon the sea. . . .

Long ago—as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, in 1961—it was my task—it was my pleasurable task—to write a paper on the English and Scottish traditional ballads for a medieval seminar taught by marvelous Helen White, one of only two female professors of English in that largely Harvard-educated, highly conservative department; subsequently, for years of our married life, Ray and I listened to records of ballads, in particular those sung by Richard Dyer-Bennet. It is this singer’s voice that I hear now. Never had it occurred to me—until now—clutching a can of aerosol shaving cream in my hand—that this plainspoken, plaintive Scots ballad has been the very poetry of our lives.

There once was a ship

And she sailed upon the sea. . . .

(Now that “The Golden Vanity” has invaded my thoughts I will not be able to expel it from my mind for days, or weeks; I am helpless to expel such invasions of songs, sometimes a random stanza of poetry, by any conscious effort.)

Again I think—that is, the thought comes to me—that vague fantasy in which masochism masks fear, horror, terror—how frequently in the past I had consoled myself that, should something happen to Ray, I would not want to outlive him. I could not bear to outlive him! I would take a fatal dose of sleeping pills, or . . .

How common is this fantasy, I wonder. How many women console themselves with the thought that, should their husbands die, they too might die—somehow?

It’s a consolation to wives not-yet-widows. It’s a way of stating I love him so much. I am one who loves so very much.

When he’d been just middle-aged, and not yet an aging, ailing man himself, my father would say in that way of masculine bravado: If I ever get bad as—(referring to an elderly chronically ill and complaining relative)—put me out of my misery!

But when Daddy grew older he would live for years with myriad illnesses—emphysema, prostate cancer, macular degeneration—and he did not express any desire to die, still less any desire to be put out of my misery.

For this is the fallacy of such wishes, made in “good health”—truly they will not apply to the person who has uttered them, at a later time.

So too the prospect of taking sleeping pills at this time is unthinkable. No more than I would escape the cold by flying to Miami tomorrow morning. My responsibility to my husband would not allow such impulsive behavior.

“Honey? What should I do with these things?”

Not quite aloud, in a murmur not to be overheard these words are uttered. Of course I know, I know perfectly well that my husband is dead, and will not hear me, still less reply.

Another habit begun this past week—talking to myself, querying myself. Animated conversations with myself while driving the car. If at home, talking to the cats—in a bright ebullient voice intended to assure the frightened animals that all is well. (It is always allowable, to talk to pets. One may be eccentric but not crazy talking to pets.)

Here is a fact, I think—I think it is a fact—not once in our forty-seven years, twenty-five days of marriage did I overhear Ray talking to himself. It was rare that Ray muttered to himself—swore, cursed.

When I return to the hospital room—to Ray’s bedside—I am relieved that no one else is there. I think that there was a nurse here just a moment ago. I think that she told me something, or asked me something, though I don’t remember what it was. I want to cry with relief, she has gone. We are alone.

Outside Ray’s room in the hospital corridor there is no one. Those five or six medical workers, strangers to me, as to Ray, including the very nice soft-spoken Indian-American woman doctor, have vanished utterly.

Were these individuals united in their effort—a failed effort, a futile effort—to save my husband’s life? Is there some term for what they are, or were—not a Death Team—though in this case their effort ended in death—a Life-Rescue Team?

Badly I want to speak with them. I want to ask them what Ray might have said, nearing the end of his life. If he’d been delirious, or—deluded—

This rash thought, like others, rushes into my head and out of my head and is lost.

There is something that I must do: make a call. Calls.

But first, I must gather together Ray’s belongings.

“Honey? Tell me—what should I do?”

I am feeling very light-headed. The phone ringing and waking me from that frothy-thin sleep is confused with a ringing in my ears and the taunting lines of the ballad—And she sailed upon the sea and the name of our ship was—I am thinking that Ray so much admired Richard Dyer-Bennet—strange how we’d stopped listening to folk songs, which in the 1960s we’d loved.

Though there is no one in the hall yet I am conscious of being observed. Very likely, all the nurses on the floor have been alerted—There is a woman in 539. Ray Smith’s wife. Smith died, the wife has come to take away his belongings.

I have been watching Ray—I have been staring at Ray—I am transfixed, staring at Ray—I am memorizing Ray as he lies on his back beneath a thin sheet, his eyes shut, his recently shaved face smooth and unlined and handsome—and I am thinking—that is, the thought comes to me—that Ray is in fact breathing—but very faintly—or he is about to breathe; his eyelids are quivering, or about to quiver. As in sleep our eyeballs sometimes move as jerkily as in waking life—if we are dreaming, and seeing in the dream—so it seems to me that Ray’s eyeballs are moving, beneath the shut eyelids; it seems to me He is dreaming something. I shouldn’t wake him.

It’s an instinct you quickly acquire during the hospital vigil, not to disturb a sleeping patient. For in such a place, sleep is precious.

I shouldn’t disturb Ray of course. Yet—I have to tell him that I’m sorry—I can’t leave this room without trying to explain why I’d come too late—though there is no explanation—“Honey, I’m so sorry. I was just—at home. I was just home, I could have been with you, I—don’t know why. . . . I was asleep. It was a mistake. I don’t understand how—it happened.”

How faltering my words are, how banal and inane. As I’ve become physically clumsy this past week—there are mysterious bumps, bruises and small cuts on my legs and arms—no mystery about the bumps on my head, which I’ve repeatedly struck while getting into and out of our car—so too I can’t seem to speak without faltering, or stammering, or losing the thread of my concentration so that I can’t remember what I’ve been saying, or why it had seemed urgent to say it. Most of what I’d talked about with Ray had been his work, his mail, household matters of the most ordinary sort. Nothing that I’d said to him expressed what I’d wanted to say. And now I can’t comprehend—I can barely remember, though it was only a few hours ago—why I’d gone to bed hours earlier than I usually did, why I’d imagined that tonight had been a “safe” time to sleep.

That I was sleeping at a time when my husband was dying is so horrible a thought, I can’t confront it.

Eating—I’d eaten a meal when I’d returned home. For the first time in days I had prepared an actual meal—a heated meal—and not eaten just a bowl of yogurt and fruit while working at my computer. And so I’d been eating when my husband had succumbed to the terrible fever that precipitated his death—the thought is repulsive to me, obscene.

Inexplicable actions, behavior. The murderer who swears that he doesn’t remember what he did, he’d blacked out, no memory, not the faintest idea, and no reason, no motive—such behavior makes sense to me now.

What is becoming rapidly mysterious is orderly life, coherence.

Knowing what must be done, and doing it.

This hospital room is so cold that I’m shivering convulsively. Though I have not removed my coat. My red quilted coat I’d been wearing when the speeding driver slammed into the front of our car and the air bags exploded pinning us in our seats.

Soon, it will seem to me that Ray died in this car crash. Ray died, and I survived. Is that it?

The two crashes will conflate in my mind. The crash at the intersection of Rosedale Road and Elm Road, the crash at the Princeton Medical Center.

After the one, we’d walked away giddy with relief. In our relief we’d kissed, clutched at each other for the pain hadn’t yet started.

In this room Ray had complained of the cold, especially at night, and when he had to wait in Radiology to be X-rayed. Despite the fever he was running, yet he’d been cold. Yet I can remember when Ray went outdoors in winter without a coat, in Windsor. Frigid wind blowing from the Detroit River, the massive lake beyond—Lake Michigan.

Younger then, not so susceptible to colds.

I am frightened—I don’t remember that person. I am losing that person—my husband—in that long-ago time before the wreck.

My instinct now is—to locate a blanket, to pull a blanket up to Ray’s chin. He is lying beneath just a thin white cotton sheet.

I know—I know!—my husband is no longer living. He doesn’t require a blanket, nor even a sheet. I know this and yet—I am not able to understand that he is dead.

Which is why I seem to be waiting for some sign from him, some signal—a private signal—for we’ve always been so close, a single thought can pass between us, like a glance—I’m waiting for Ray to forgive me —It’s all right. What you are doing is all right and not a mistake.

And even if it was a mistake, I love you.

Just yesterday I was able to cry. In this room at this bedside leaning over my husband who was surprised by my tears I was able to cry but now I am not able to cry, I am dry-eyed, my mouth is dry as sandpaper. Now for the first time I see that Ray isn’t wearing his glasses—how strange this is, that I hadn’t noticed before. And on the bedside table, there are his glasses, which are relatively new, wire-rimmed and rather stylish glasses on which he wears clip-on dark lenses in bright sunshine. Very slowly I take up these glasses though I have nothing to put them in, for safekeeping; and here is Ray’s wristwatch—the time is now 1:29 A.M.

And here are Ray’s colored pencils, that will need sharpening.

These items, I place carefully in my black tote bag. Beautiful cut flowers—white and yellow mums, red carnations, purple iris—in vases, from friends—these I will leave behind.

(Have I thanked our friends for these flowers? I don’t think so—I don’t remember. So many messages on our answering machine at home—I haven’t answered. And many messages deleted by accident, or in haste.)

The beautiful large Valentine card, signed by our friends—for Ray—to cheer him up—this, I should have brought to him, yesterday.

On this Valentine the heartfelt wishes of our friends—I am staring at the words in a sort of trance—Dear Ray wish you were here. Ray—be well soon! Ray you must come back to us soon, we love you and miss you so much. Ray here’s to sausage in our future! Ray please rest and rest and rest! It takes time. And we want to see you soon. Ray heal well! We all miss you tonight. Come home soon! Ray—I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better and hope you will be entirely recovered very soon. Dear Ray—I once knew a man named Ray, who I thought was very okay, he liked to read, while drinking mead, the wonderful man who was Ray . . .

It seems horrible to me, unconscionable—how could I have been so stupid, selfish, neglectful—I hadn’t brought this Valentine for Ray to see. Naively thinking I would keep it for him, to give to him at home.

“And now it’s too late.”

So many mistakes I’ve made, and am making. This is new to me, as if I have crossed over to another place where continually I will be making mistakes, stupid mistakes, contemptible mistakes. Soon I will learn that a widow is one who makes mistakes.

In the closet are Ray’s clothes, shoes. A laundry bag into which Ray has put soiled underwear and socks. There is his jacket—the one he’d worn on Monday morning. There, the striped blue flannel shirt, and the trousers. I am fumbling to remove Ray’s clothes from the hangers, the blue striped shirt falls to the floor . . . In a panic I am thinking I will have to make two trips to the car. I will have to make two trips to the car.

If I leave this room, I will never be able to return. I will never be able to force myself to return.

I should call someone, a friend. I should call for help. I can’t carry these things by myself! Not in one trip.

Yet, I feel shy about calling friends. It is 1:30 A.M.—a terrible shock to be awakened by a ringing phone, and news of a friend’s death.

Better not. Better just go home.

In the morning will be soon enough. And call Ray’s sister who lives in Connecticut, whom I have never met.

And my brother, and sister-in-law.

Ray has died. He was in the hospital for not quite a week with pneumonia, he was getting better but—he died.

Instead of leaving the hospital room, I lift the phone receiver. I must have decided to call a friend, friends—this seems to be what I am doing, after all.

And the ringing in the distance, invading another’s sleep.

In this way, at this moment, the Widow acts instinctively—she does not drive home alone as perhaps she’d fantasized and she does not do harm to herself as perhaps she’d fantasized—she calls friends.

But only friends whose telephone numbers she seems to have memorized.